Andreas Thesis Outline

Thesis Outline Second Draft

I. Introduction

Background:

The 18th Shell Youth Study 2019 is based on a representative sample of 2,572 young Germans aged between 12 and 25 who were interviewed personally by trained Kantar interviewers regarding their living conditions and their attitudes and focus. The survey was conducted between early January to late March of 2019 on the basis of a standardized questionnaire. Two-hour, in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 young people in this age group as part of this qualitative study.

A study, released 2018 by a research team led by Michael Cacciatore of the University of Georgia, finds the more people rely on their Facebook feed for news, the less politically knowledgeable they are. ‘A greater reliance on social media and Facebook specifically for news might serve to depress knowledge levels. This is particularly important given the growth of news sharing and consumption through social media.’ (...) ‘The analysis revealed that, while Facebook use itself failed to predict political knowledge scores, HOW Facebook users engaged with the platform was a significant predictor of knowledge,’ the researchers report. ‘Increased use of Facebook for both news consumption and news sharing purposes was associated with lower political knowledge levels.’ The reasons for this aren't clear, but the researchers offer some plausible explanations. The first and most obvious is ‘selective exposure’—the notion that "users who rely heavily on Facebook for news purposes are specifically selecting agreeable information from like-minded individuals.’ In other words, their goal is to feel good, not learn new things—hence their lower level of knowledge. Two other possibilities: People who spend a lot of time on Facebook are spending less time with traditional news sources, and thus missing out on important information; and social media encourages people to engage in emotion-laden "hot button" issues, rather than nuts-and-bolts information about how the government actually operates. While these findings are troubling, Cacciatore and his colleagues offer some reasons for hope. They note that people who had Facebook accounts for longer periods of time also tended to have higher levels of political knowledge. While they could simply be older, it's possible that, ‘as people become more familiar with Facebook, they become better equipped to sift through the vast quantities of data available on the platform, making knowledge acquisition easier.’

A study conducted January 2016 by the University of Chicago’s NORC shed some light on how Americans navigate the Modern Information Environment: Eighty-one percent of Americans believe it is easier to find useful information today than it was five years ago. At the same time, 16 percent report they are often overwhelmed by how much information comes to them, and another 62 percent say the amount of information they get can sometimes be too much. Information habits and attitudes do vary based on a person’s age and education, but there are relatively few differences by race, ethnicity, or gender. And when it comes to party identification, partisans differ more from independents than they do from each other.

Thesis Outline First Draft

I. Introduction

Background:
Many people of the western first world state that they do not want to talk about nowadays news/politics because they know too little about it. [<Steve asks: is this anecdotal or is empirical data informing this statement?] They are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that they cope with. Does society really have a lower attention span because they are exposed to much more information? [This is a good question. can we assume this? is there empirical evidence? If so what is it? If not, why do we assume it to be so?] And how does this affect the movie?

Thesis Statement:
The acceleration of society is affecting the movie. Properly applied to the moving image, the concept of brevity can help the viewer regain attention for information that matters.[<Steve: is this a modernist solution? (See, in the early 20th century, Otto Neurath on the use of visual information or gestalt theory) in which we consider an 'economic use of information' against an 'overabundance' of information'. You need to be clear about what you know and where you stand on it.]

II. Body

First Topic: The history of the brevity discourse
Different kinds of historical accounts shape our understandings and assumptions about technology.

1. Cicero vs Quintilian: boring the audience vs keeping something from the audience
2. Aristoteles: brevity in an appropriate manner
3. Scientific communication

Second Topic: How the human brain processes information
The Science of Gaining Focus

1. The two brain systems (according to Daniel Kahneman)
2. How distraction works (according to Daniel Goleman)
3. Regaining focus (Meditation, Nature and Joy)

Third Topic: Applying the brevity discourse to the moving image
How do changing parameters in the moving image affect communication

1. The fast image in advertising
2. Density of information in news programs
3. The moving image in social media

III. Conclusion

From ancient times to the modern era the rhetoric has been the binding and constant guideline of communication. Nowadays there is less new in the rhetoric, even though the complexity of content has increased. Also, there seems to be a dominance of the visual in the „screen-“ or „display culture“.
There is a need for tools, methods and infrastructures to ensure that we can regain focus and fully take part again in a political discourse